1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a tray-type optical disc drive, and more particularly to a tray-type optical disc drive improving the reliability of the disc under vertical disposition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to the rapid growth in the volume of information, most of the multi-media products are issued in the form of optical discs. While consumptive optical discs are widely used nowadays, the optical disc drive has become an indispensable piece of equipment to a computer. Normally, the most commonly seen tray-type optical disc drive is installed in an ordinary computer with the surface of the disc lying horizontally. Such tray-type optical disc drive is called horizontal type optical disc drive, and can be applied in a vertical mainframe of desk top computer or an external optical disc drive. Similarly, an optical disc drive is called a vertical type optical disc drive if the surface of the disc is vertical when the disc is loaded in a computer, and can be applied in a vertical mainframe of a desk top computer or an external optical disc drive to achieve a better utilization of the space.
Conventional tray-type optical disc drive uses a moveable retainer to stabilize a disc under vertical disposition. Referring to FIG. 1, a diagram of a conventional tray-type optical disc drive is shown. Conventional tray-type optical disc drive 100 includes an optical disc drive body 110, a disc tray 120, an upper cover 130, a front panel 150 and a base unit 160. The upper cover 130 is for covering the optical disc drive body 110. The front panel 150 is disposed in the front side of the optical disc drive body 110. The disc tray 120 is disposed on the optical disc drive body 110 and moves along direction A of FIG. 1 to carry the disc to enter the optical disc drive body 110 from outside. The disc tray 120 has a receiver 122 disposed thereon for receiving the disc.
When the tray-type optical disc drive 100 is under vertical disposition, the disc tray 120 needs to have special mechanism of design to hold the disc until the correct feeding position is reached, so that errors in data retrieving can be avoided and that the disc would not come off the disc tray 120 when the disc tray is entering or leaving the disc drive. For example, four moveable retainers 140 are evenly disposed on an inner surface of the receiver 122. When tray-type optical disc drive is vertically disposed, the user loads the disc into the receiver 122 first, then touches the moveable retainer 140 with fingers for the disc to be retained at the correct feeding position on the receiver 122, so that the disc would not come off the disc tray 120 when the disc tray 120 is entering or leaving the disc drive.
However, the disc tray 120 and the moveable retainer 140 disclosed above are not able to complete retain the disc. Therefore, the data surface of the disc is very likely to be scratched when the disc enters or leaves the disc drive vertically. Moreover, it is indeed inconvenient that the user has to touch the moveable retainer 140 with fingers for the disc to be fixed at the correct feeding position. Furthermore, the disposition of the moveable retainer 140 increases both material cost and assembly cost.
If the disc in use is a defective disc by any chance, the disc is likely to break into pieces when the disc loaded in the tray-type optical disc drive 100 is rotated in a high speed to be retrieved by the tray-type optical disc drive 100. The broken disc which is ejected and scattered around in a high speed is very likely to hit and deform the front panel 150. The fragments of the broken disc may even hurt the user when ejected from the tray-type optical disc drive 100 through the clearance between the front panel 150 and the disc tray 120.